Destiny 2: The Final Shape was recently unleashed on the masses, and we have spent the last several days playing through the latest expansion. Does the game continue to impress, or should this one get lost in space?
Read on to find out
Developer Bungie’s Destiny franchise has been around since 2014 and saw quite a few expansions, extending its life all the way into 2017. Destiny 2 released in 2017 and continues the saga of the Destiny franchise. There has been quite a few expansions since its release, and year seven brings us to the The Final Shape expansion, which Bungie is calling the beginning of the end for the first story arc.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – The Witness
The Witness first made his appearance in the Year Six expansion, called Lightfall, and has turned out to be quite the formidable foe. We learn early on that he isn’t a singular conscience, but actually the combined consciousnesses of an entire race of alien beings that was bound together through the mastery of the Darkness. The Witness is hellbent on running down our longtime friend and alien being The Traveler in order to ‘save’ the universe and force it into The Final Shape. The Final Shape refers to a potential end-state of the universe in which the Witness intends to winnow, carve and calcify the universe into a frozen state of eternal perfection. It will not only take our fully evolved guardian, but many others from Destiny’s past and present to stop the Witness in his tracks and defeat him once and for all.
The story arc from the Destiny franchise is like a twenty novel saga, with so much backstory that you could take a deep dive online, and not come up for air for weeks. To find the first reference to the Final Shape, you would have to go all the way back to the third expansion for the original game The Taken King, where Oryx described it as, “a fire without fuel, burning forever, killing death, asking a question that is its own answer, entirely itself.”
This just goes to show you how deep the storytelling goes, and how long Bungie has been working towards the end of the story arc. This isn’t some weak written video game garbage. This is top notch lore and fully fledged out storylines that you easily create a ten season, epic TV series on. This should be award winning writing.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – Act I of III
The Final Shape expansion is divided into three acts, with Act I being available now, Act II will be available around the 15th of July, 2024, and then the third and final act, ACT III will become available around August 26th, 2024. This will concluded the original story, but doesn’t mean the game won’t continue with other storylines. With Destiny 2 being used as a game with a service model, we expect at least another two or three years before Destiny 3 launches, at least that’s what we Hope.
Our Hope is always the same with Destiny games, expansions, seasons, DLCs, exotic missions, secret missions, in-game events, merchandise, et cetera – we genuinely Hope you enjoy the time you spend with it. Anything we’ve made or will make, that’s the Hope.
Make your own fate.
— Luke Smith (@thislukesmith) June 3, 2024
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – New Subclass
How much fun could a new expansion be if they didn’t give us new toys to play with? Destiny 2: The Final Shape includes a brand new Prismatic sub-class that allows you to pick and choose from the other classes, in order to build your own personalized sub-class.
Each character type has their own spin on the Prismatic sub-class, and it definitely adds to the fun and customization of the game. You’ll be picking up different abilities as you play through the campaign and through side quests, so get ready to jump in to a different feeling guardian.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – Pathfinders
Another new addition changes the way you unlock more powerful gear through different types of gameplay. You’ll find a couple of Pathfinder boards that can lead you to extra powerful Prime engrams. The brand new location, called The Pale Heart of the Traveler has one, as does your Vanguard playlist area.
Each node of the Pathfinder board corresponds to a different task. For the Vanguard board you’ll need to do things like picking up Motes in Gambit, or taking down a large number of enemies, or using a specific weapon type to kill bad guys. There’s also tasks for strikes and for the Crucible. The best part is, you can reset the board for 10K glimmer and earn another Prime Engram.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – Launch Pains
You would think that for as long as developer Bungie has been running this service, they could launch the game without any major hiccups. If you thought that, you would be wrong. Launch day for the game saw several million players, across all platforms, trying to dive into the expansion as soon as it became available. Bungie’s servers took a nose dive, and most were lucky to even make it to orbit, let alone the character selection screen. We made it to orbit, but were unable to visit the new location. Every time we selected it, we just circled around the planet and ended back up in our stationary orbit, unable to do much of anything.
If you took the day off of work, you were probably SOL and no too happy with your wasted vacation time. Bungie was aware of the issues, and did at least let everyone know they were working on the problems, but still, wasted time is wasted time.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – Conclusion
Once past the initial server errors, the game eventually ran pretty great and has been quite a bit of fun. The new location has quite a bit of fun stuff to see and do (and kill), and the new weapons and ability combinations alone should be enough to bring veteran players back, and help the noobs get up to par pretty quick.
We would have given the game a solid 8, but those server errors at launch are almost unforgivable.
7.5
Destiny 2: The Final Shape review code provided by publisher and reviewed on a PS5 and a HP Victus gaming PC. For more information on scoring, please read What our review scores really mean.
